Creation's dawn / by "Kish" ; with a preface by A. H. Sayce.

  • Kish, pseud.
Date:
1908
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Creation's dawn / by "Kish" ; with a preface by A. H. Sayce. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    3410 B.G. for the beginning of the Sixth Dynasty with an uncertainty (to put it liberally) of fifty to one hundred years. This 3410 B.c. then should be equal to the date that we find by the dead reckoning of Dynasties back from the Eighteenth to the Sixth, which is given in that way as 3503 b.c. And this shows that we have to deal with errors which are probably within a century, and that we are not left with several centuries of uncertainty. In the present rough state of the astronomical data, and the doubts as to the MS. authorities, we have reached quite as close an equivalence as we may hope for; and, at least, there is enough to show us that we may trust to the nearest century with fair grounds of belief. These dates, then, are what have been provisionally adopted in this history, and though thej'’ are stated to the nearest }^ear, for the sake of the intercompar- ison, it must be remembered that they only profess to go to within a century in the earlier parts of the scale. The foregoing is from Flinders Petrie’s “ History of Egypt,” and is given so that the reader may have some comprehension as to what the data are whence we get our Egyptian Chronology, and also whence Egyptian Historians derived their data as to the different kings and dynasties. The period of Egyptian History to which our attention is directed is between the end of the